The Breeze EDITORIAL: The Breeze: A Gift From the Community To The Community

by Nathan Grutchfield

The Breeze editorial meeting.

I began working with The Bridge in February, on a cold Friday morning meeting with two bosses Nat Frothingham and Carla Occaso. They soon developed an understanding of my interests for topics of writing pieces, then then gave me ideas for articles that I shortly capitalized on, with my first story portraying a “light” topic. I enjoyed the article but it was only a taste of what was to come, in fact it was perhaps even not doing justice to what my full experience here has been.

The articles that I have reflected on the most, period, and indeed reflected on in the most positive light have been those with a topic that draws out natural passion. Every writer enjoys the feeling of hands flaming across the keys of computer, with words, sentence structure, and insight on life arising in the place of literal fire. I had that feeling many times, which causes me to deem the experience here at The Bridge highly satisfying.

I think the vast majority of the time there is a strong correlation between the commonality of those sensations one encounters when writing to the sheer “success,” a multifaceted term, of that writing. Passion in and of itself embodies success in anything, including writing. There is a certain hunger that is included in “passion,” a hunger to learn more, or express more, or just to write for writing’s sake. Oppositely, there is no worse feeling though, than writing to no avail, with words being forced down absent of any true meaning.

When one is more able to find passion, and employ it in their writing, there concurrently arises benefit from an audience.

It is hard to for me to quantify my own success other than to my happiness, in which case The Bridge, and The Breeze, has undoubtedly been a success. A chief hope for The Breeze would be for it to allow young writers to experience true passion, and, in consequence of that, develop pieces that satisfy audiences even nearly enough as they do the writer that creates them through the best possible emotions for a “successful” writing piece.

I have witnessed encouraging evidence, with some contributing writers for The Breeze clearly demonstrating a variety of strong emotions that lie in the very topic of whatever piece such a writer is creating. In the process of recruiting people to write, I have encountered a wide variety of answers:

What has been very positive in the results from these people is embodied in such aspects as: the vivid description used by Adam Blachly in his thrilling account of his grandfather in World War II’s South Pacific affairs, the fresh recollection of Bethany Brush on her awesome encounter with Bernie Sanders in the Montpelier Independence Day Parade, and finally, the introspective eye of Robert Barlow when considering the film recently viewed by both of us, called Older than Ireland.

Writing has been a great medium for these people to express natural qualities in a way that the community may enjoy. I am extremely proud of everyone who has worked alongside me through the process, and I feel confident that they have already made this project a “success.”